Creating content or blogging for inbound marketing is easier than most people think. Don’t let you bad memories of college papers, high school essays, and any other writing past episodes scare you from starting your blog to attract more business your way.
Here is my strategy, once you define what your area of expertise is (your talents, dreams, and hobbies), that’s what you should write about. If you don’t know what that is yet, think of all your friends and family members that come to you for answers about something and how it relates to your business. For example, you have a raw vegan restaurant and want to bring in more people, not just raw vegans but regular people in the SAD diet. Now, think of what kind of questions you find yourself always answering? That’s your area of expertise!
Types of Content
As with diets, each person is different, so you have to find what type of content is right for you. You have several choices such as blog posts, e-books, video blog (vlog), live webinars, and podcasts & webcasts. If you aren’t good at writing but you know your sh*t, then think about a video blog. Denis is a great example of this. He knows a lot about Inbound Marketing, SEO, and creating content but doesn’t enjoy writing. So a great fit for him would be a video blog. I enjoy live webinars, blogging, and creating e-books instead and not much being in front of a camera.
What to Write and Create
Now that you know what you are good at and what your best type of content is, you need to figure out what to write/create. A great way to share your knowledge is a “How-to blog”. Teach someone how to do something. Like I’m teaching you write now how to write!
List blogs and vlogs are awesome too. Top 3, 5, 10 things that you (recommend, chose, liked, enjoyed, etc). For example, Top 5 Raw Vegan Restaurants in South Florida, 3things to do on vacation on a budget, 10 best wine bloggers, etc. You get the idea.
Another one is to write about your industry or local events including meetups you attended in the past or will be attending soon.
And last but not least, book, article/journal, movie, and video reviews. This is one of the easiest ways to write (in my opinion). Write on the latest raw vegan recipe book that came out and what you learned from it. Review the best 3 bicycle shops in town, etc.
Once you start writing your first few blogs, you’ll see it’s easier to come up with things to write. I will share my checklist for publishing a blog soon; but for now, don’t worry about making your content SEO worthy, just write and create until you are comfortable with all sorts of content. Lauren has shared some great ideas for images and titles which are important too. If you are blogging keep it under 500 words and ensure your tone is conversational… think of telling your friends and how you would talk to them. Don’t remember your high school/college/work rules on writing. Keep it simple and interesting!
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